Administration & Business Affairs

VOL. 6 | ISSUE 3 | Spring 2013

FRONT & CENTER

Front & Center: Customer Service

These days, customer service is front and center in ABA. With a renewed emphasis on attaining service excellence, the department has identified customer service as one of its foundational strategic goals, and is taking steps to look at everything it does through the lens of the customer.

It is a challenge to create a customer-centric culture in an organization where compliance often rules the day.

In many organizations, regulatory requirements serve as an excuse for poor service. But there are options that acknowledge the importance of both, and ABA is exploring new ways to meet customer needs all while continuing to perform its vital stewardship role.

ABA kicked off its customer service initiative in January, with a two-day workshop featuring speaker Dennis Snow. Snow’s ideas have been taken to heart across the division, as staff are busy finding ways to incorporate the customer perspective into everyday practice and new projects and initiatives.The list is exhaustive. From new, easy to navigate websites and services that reach out to help before incidents occur, to minor changes that make a major difference, there are many, many improvements in the works.

What makes Snow’s lessons resonate are their simplicity, with catch phrases that bring profound concepts to mind, and their focus on the human element. Switching from a “task mentality” to an“experience mentality” can transform encounters, where shared experiences create win-win outcomes. Everyone feels valued. Looking through the “lens of the customer” triggers that switch from self to other-centeredness, and “everything speaks” is about how perceptions are created. It makes you want to do better to make a good impression.

The transition from a simple phrase to deeper meaning is the goal ABA seeks to reach, as we take customer service beyond front and center and weave it into the fabric of ABA’s everyday identity.